WATERTOWN, New York, Oct 24 (IPS) - Iraq war veterans now stationed at a base here say that morale among U.S. soldiers in the country is so poor, many are simply parking their Humvees and pretending to be on patrol, a practice dubbed "search and avoid" missions.

Phil Aliff is an active duty soldier with the 10th Mountain Division stationed at Fort Drum in upstate New York. He served nearly one year in Iraq from August 2005 to July 2006, in the areas of Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, both west of Baghdad.

"Morale was incredibly low," said Aliff, adding that he joined the military because he was raised in a poor family by a single mother and had few other prospects. "Most men in my platoon in Iraq were just in from combat tours in Afghanistan."

According to Aliff, their mission was to help the Iraqi Army "stand up" in the Abu Ghraib area of western Baghdad, but in fact his platoon was doing all the fighting without support from the Iraqis they were supposedly preparing to take control of the security situation.

"I never heard of an Iraqi unit that was able to operate on their own," said Aliff, who is now a member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). "The only reason we were replaced by an Iraqi Army unit was for publicity."

Aliff said he participated in roughly 300 patrols.

"We were hit by so many roadside bombs we became incredibly demoralised, so we decided the only way we wouldn't be blown up was to avoid driving around all the time."

"So we would go find an open field and park, and call our base every hour to tell them we were searching for weapons caches in the fields and doing weapons patrols and everything was going fine," he said, adding, "All our enlisted people became very disenchanted with our chain of command."

Aliff, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),
refused to return to Iraq with his unit, which arrived in Kirkuk two
weeks ago. "They've already lost a guy, and they are now fostering the
sectarian violence by arming the Sunnis while supporting the Shia
politically... classic divide and conquer."

Aliff told IPS he is
set to be discharged by the military next month because they claim his
PTSD "is untreatable by their doctors".

According to the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the number of Iraq and Afghanistan
war veterans seeking treatment for PTSD increased nearly 70 percent in
the 12 months ending on Jun. 30.

The nearly 50,000 VA-documented
PTSD cases greatly exceed the 30,000 military personnel that the
Pentagon officially classifies as wounded in both occupations.

VA
records show that mental health has become the second-largest area of
illness for which veterans of the ongoing occupations are seeking
treatment at VA hospitals and clinics. The total number of mental
health cases among war veterans increased by 58 percent; from 63,767 on
Jun. 30, 2006, to 100,580 on Jun. 30, 2007, according to the VA.

Other active duty Iraq veterans tell similar stories of disobeying orders so as not to be attacked so frequently.

"We'd
go to the end of our patrol route and set up on top of a bridge and use
it as an over-watch position," Eli Wright, also an active duty soldier
with the 10th Mountain Division, told IPS. "We would just sit with our
binoculars and observe rather than sweep. We'd call in radio checks
every hour and say we were doing sweeps."

Wright added, "It was
a common tactic, a lot of people did that. We'd just hang out, listen
to music, smoke cigarettes, and pretend."

The 26-year-old medic
complained that his unit did not have any armoured Humvees during his
time in Iraq, where he was stationed in Ramadi, capital of the volatile
Al Anbar province.

"We put sandbags on the floors of our
vehicles, which had canvas doors," said Wright, who was in Iraq from
September 2003 until September 2004. "By the end of our tour, we were
bolting any metal we could find to our Humvees. Everyone was doing
this, and we didn't get armoured Humvees in country until after we
left."

Other veterans, like 25-year-old Nathan Lewis, who was in
Iraq for the invasion of March 2003 until June of that year while
serving in the 214th field artillery brigade, complained of lack of
training for what they were ordered to do, in addition to not having
armoured Humvees for their travels.

"We never got training for a
lot of the work we did," he explained. "We had a white phosphorous
mortar round that cooked off in the back of one of our trucks, because
we loaded that with some other ammo, and we weren't trained how to do
it the right way." The "search and avoid" missions appear to have been
commonplace around much of Iraq for years now.

Geoff Millard
served nine years in the New York Army National Guard, and was in Iraq
from October 2004 until October 2005 working for a general at a
Tactical Operation Centre.

Millard, also a member of IVAW, said
that part of his duties included reporting "significant actions", or
SIGACTS, which is how the U.S. military describes an attack on their
forces.

"We had units that never called in SIGACTS," Millard,
who monitored highly volatile areas like Baquba, Tikrit and Samarra,
told IPS. "When I was there two years ago, there were at least five
companies that never had SIGACTS. I think 'search and avoids' have been
going on there for a long time."

"One
of my buddies is in Baghdad right now and we email all the time," he
explained, "He just told me that nearly each day they pull into a
parking lot, drink soda, and shoot at the cans. They pay Iraqi kids to
bring them things and spread the word that they are not doing anything
and to please just leave them alone."